SN Tripathi Memorial Lectures (2011)…

'Use Energy Efficiently... We Pay lot more for energy compare to other countries'
Dr Ajay Mathur

Dr Ajay Mathur, Director General of the Bureau of Energy Efficiency GOI, is a member of the Prime Minister's Council on Climate Change. He has also been a member of the Indian delegation to climate-change negotiations for the last five years, and has been the main negotiator dealing with the development and transfer of technology in those negotiations.

As Director General of BEE, he provides leadership to the national programmes to
promote energy efficiency.During the first four years of the current 11-th Five Year Plan, the various initiatives of the BEE have resulted in avoided generation capacity of over 7,500 MW.
Prior to joining the Bureau, Dr. Mathur had led the Climate Change Team of the World Bank in Washington, and the Energy Engineering Division of TERI, in Delhi. He has also been President of Suzlon Energy Limited.

He is the co-author of three books, and has also been a Lead Author of Reports of the Nobel Prize­
winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Dr. Mathur holds a Bachelors degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Roorkee, and a PhD in Energy Engineering from the University of Illinois.
He received the Outstanding Alumni Award of the University of Illinois in 2002, and the Global
Energy-Efficiency Visionary Award of the Alliance to Save Energy in 2010.

Climate change is a phenomenon that has been forever with us through ice age, times of great heat, droughts etc. But for last about hundred and fifty years what we see change, instead of being nature driven, is being driven by a range of activities that humans do.
We simply use energy in the form of fossil fuel. If fossil fuel is burnt, Carbon Di Oxide (C0 ) is released in the atmosphere and it stays
there.There is already enough C0
gas in the atmosphere and this
additional C0
affects the environment causing climate change. The
result is visible in the form of the increased frequency of floods, droughts, cyclones that in general are changing the world that we know.

Climate Change -What we can do?

We must remember that the beginning of the whole issue is the emphasis on how we use energy.
The fact that we can read, work, lecture, move etc is all generally dependent on the electricity or petrol. In a sense without energy the quality of life that we have or aspire tc have is not possible.
Rememeber-Energy requirement is central to our existence and therefore is the first important thing to keep in mind
There is always a question- how much energy is enough, how much energ should we use?

There are various ways of measuring it. If we look at all the countries of the world, we may find that one easy indicator to assess this can be quality of human development­ UNDP's Human Development Index (HOI).As a matter of approximation,if we assume HOI at 0.9 Is a level at which the quality of life Is one that every citizen of this country would proud to have. In case If this Is agreed upon, the fact Is that there Is no country In the world that has reached the levelof HOIat 0.9 without the energy supply equivalent to three tones all per person per year.